Navies
The Seventeenth Century: The Rise Of Navies
Scale of Royal and other State Navies (displacement tonnage 000s) At the start of the century the commercial exclusivity upon the great waters attempted by Portugal and Spain was already gone. The determining race for power and mastery upon the seas had begun, with the Iberians already seen as the weakening participants in the race against the swiftly rising powers…
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Naval Strategy, Spanish-American War
The Spanish Navy protected cruiser Alfonso XIII. (Photographic History of the Spanish-American War, 1898) When news of the American blockade of Cuba reached Madrid, large numbers of Spaniards clamored to enlist in the navy. Convinced of Spanish naval strength following more than a decade of showy reconstruction and foreign purchases,…
James River Squadron, CSA
“The Blowing up of the James River Fleet, on the night of the Evacuation of Richmond.” Painting by Allen C. Redwood showing the sinking of CSS Virginia II, CSS Fredericksburg and CSS Richmond on April 3, 1865 during the American Civil War. Small Confederate naval squadron on the James River,…
The Armada – The Combat
In this painting, the artist has brought together the two main events of 8 August. In the background the English fireships are making their night attack off Calais, while the English and Spanish ships in the foreground are fighting off Gravelines, a battle that lasted from the morning to the…
The Resurrection of the Spanish Navy
120-gun Santisima Trinidad One of the most remarkable maritime achievements of the eighteenth century was the resurrection of the Spanish navy. In 1700 the Spanish navy had all but ceased to exist. After 1713 the Spanish crown put a great deal of effort into rebuilding its fleet and during the…
French Navy in the Americas
French Navy ships of the line in the Battle of the Chesapeake. The crisis of 1754 caught the French navy by surprise. Reduced to only thirty-three ships of the line on 1 January 1749, it had grown to fifty-seven ships of the line by 1 January 1755. Thirty-four of these…
Naval Doctrine 21st Century
DDG-1000 Zumwalt / DD(X) Multi-Mission Surface Combatant Future Surface Combatant. I. B. Holley concluded his 1953 seminal study, Ideas and Weapons, by observing that “to exist in a warring world the nation must pick winning weapons; if military analysts will distill every possible lesson from the history of two world…